


Pushing up roses

by anthiese



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: ...i think, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Ficlet Collection, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Headcanon, Pre-Canon, Rating May Change, i feel a bit important being the first to make a tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-14 02:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthiese/pseuds/anthiese
Summary: Notes on a holy woman's eventful life.(Major spoilers for Deer route - &others- regarding Fodlan and Church of Seiros history!)





	1. Float, flicker, soar

**Author's Note:**

> alternative summary being, i ate too much candy and cried over rhea's family stay tuned for more. if you haven't played through deer or church route, this is 100% gonna be heavy spoilers! there's def gonna be more, we'll see when inspiration slaps me again while i play through the eagles routes. in the meantime, enjoy!

Running away is the easy part. The path behind her is open, everyone has moved elsewhere. She can leave. She’s light on her feet, and her wings are strong. “You have the power of the sky above us”, Mother used to say. Mother is gone. Mother was torn to pieces. 

She sees her spine thrown across the hills, she sees it pierce through her siblings’ flesh. That’s the hardest part, having to watch. Having to live. 

She doesn’t know how the children of men haven’t noticed her, and they haven’t, because she’s still alive and Noa lies dead on the ground right in front of her. He’s in his true form, her dearest brother, his scales spread wide and red like a flower in bloom. He’s always been beautiful. 

A roar echoes through the canyon, and Rhea flinches, almost toppling over a rock. She hasn’t been running, she remembers. She was immobile on the ground, paralyzed by fear, and Noa’s wing is draped over her. 

She pushes herself up, moving the wing from her body, and she realizes its color is much duller than it’s supposed to be, and now she understands how nobody noticed her: head to toe, she’s covered in dirt, and red with her brother’s blood. He saved her life, and let them take his. There’s a spot in the center of his forehead, where his Crest should be, but it’s missing, and Rhea can see the white of his skull. They took his Crest. They took his name; they took his blood. 

She starts tapping his body, frantically, ignoring Noa’s scales scraping, cutting her hands and reopening her wounds, and she curses this form for how small it is, for the pain that shakes her chest, but finally she finds her brother’s, and it’s intact. His heart is still there, she has something to bury, something to lay to rest. 

She holds onto him tightly, waiting for her chest to stop hurting, but it doesn’t, and the pain grows and grows until she’s screaming, sobbing against the cold scales. Her voice is drowned out by louder, pained screams, and Rhea feels like she’s dying together with her siblings. She manages to stand up and turn around, to see Zanado painted red, Mother’s spine still cutting through the air, in the distance, and she can’t stop screaming, and crying, and clutching her chest. 

But the humans don’t hear, the humans don’t know. They can’t pick her apart, a little red spot in a sea of blood, but she can see them, their weapons piercing scales and flesh, stealing, desecrating. Her brothers and sisters and siblings bleeding, falling, being torn apart. All at that man’s command. The man whose hand is gripping Mother’s bones, her heart; the man who drank Mother’s blood. She needs to kill him, Rhea knows. She has to incinerate him, let him burn until his flesh melts off his bones, until there’s nothing left. 

She whispers his name with hatred, like it’s poison, and starts descending the hill, legs still uncertain, aching, trembling. A few humans are right below, kneeling over another of her siblings, so disfigured she can’t recognize who. They notice her movement, the vermin, and begin running towards her, shooting magic and arrows and their puny javelins, but even in this form she’s fast enough to dodge them, and to take their lives with her bare hands. She doesn’t know anymore whose blood is covering her, if theirs or her brother’s or her own. 

She does know that there’s only one weapon in the canyon that can kill her, only one man, and he won’t hurt her because she’ll turn him to ashes before he’s able to. She has to. She will. 

But something catches her attention as she steps towards the humans’ main force: a loud roar – not a scream, but her brother’s voice. She doesn’t even have the time to look for the source, that a shadow appears in front of her, scales gleaming like a silver shield, and blood, blood everywhere. Tathlum places his talons by her two sides, blocking the humans—_him—_from her sight. Hiding her from them. Once again. 

“Leave,” he’s telling her, “run.” 

Now more children of men must have noticed them, from below her brother’s scales she can see the monsters getting closer. They’re not the man she needs, they’re not him. She has to cut through them, she has to cleave a path, she has to—

“Rhea.” Tathlum calls again. “Take this. Leave.” 

He lowers his talons, and he drops a sword at her feet—Begalta’s. She recalls seeing the humans take her apart. 

“It’s all I could retrieve. Leave, please leave, Rhea.” 

She looks at her brother, the blood trickling down his scales, his blue eyes getting pale, liquid. She looks in the distance, to the source of that pain, to Mother’s spine cutting through the hills. 

She should stay. She has to kill that man, that’s what her strength is for, that’s why she’s still alive. For Mother, for her siblings, because he’s taken everything from her. 

But Tathlum is strong. Tathlum is wise. Tathlum is wounded, and he knows he won’t survive, because that sword is so much stronger than he is. So much stronger than she is. And if she fights that man now... 

“Our little Seiros.” He calls her so sweetly, by the name Mother would use for her, and Rhea sees something shining in her brother’s eye. He wants her to run. He wants her to live. 

She nods, stepping back from him, and her body starts to take its true form, limbs getting longer, wings spreading wide, but she doesn’t feel in any way stronger. The canyon is still red. 

Her head reaches down, taking their sister’s sword between her fangs, and when she’s back up, Tathlum has let his eyes close. 

She gives herself one last moment to etch the landscape in her memory, the red, the bodies, the commanders taking them apart, _him—_before another javelin flies by her horns. She turns away from the humans, from her brother, and she takes flight. And she flies, until the sun disappears, until the night falls, until her bones feel like they’re shattering, until she can’t see the blood anymore. 


	2. This black rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is something incomprehensible about the children of men. (or, Rhea meets someone important)

She wakes up from a nightmare, holding her chest tight, small fingers digging into soft flesh. She wakes up to the feeling of hands all over her, the smell and dampness of blood on her skin, and she curls into herself, limbs trembling, as if she’d been dumped in freezing waters. 

She sees nothing but dark red, at first, and she starts to wonder if maybe she died in her sleep, and if her siblings placed her inside the Holy Tomb next to Mother, and that maybe they might meet in this dream, and wake up together – then there is hands on her, on her shoulder, on her knee, rolling her on her back, pushing her down, and the cold kiss of water on her forehead, a hand keeping it still as she weakly tosses about, and all of a sudden, a burst of color appears over her, viridian cutting through the red. 

Someone’s eyes. A Nabatean, blood of her blood. Blood of Mother’s blood, even if Rhea can’t recognize their face, they must be one and the same. Then the shadow speaks, and the colors start to come back to her eyes, and with them, the memories. There’s no more Nabateans, she remembers. There’s no one left. She can’t breathe.

“Stop moving,” the voice repeats, and the water is on her forehead again. “These are some terrible wounds you have here, you don’t want to open them again.” 

Now those green eyes are above her, large and dark and definitely human, and Rhea gasps for air, pawing the ground below her for a weapon, something, anything to defend herself from this creature, but the hands keeping her down are strong, and her body feels so, so weak. She lets her eyes close, and she sees red again. Maybe this is how she’s supposed to die? Alone in the world after having run away, without a fight, and at the hand of... she didn’t even look at their face. No, she can’t die like this. Her head snaps up. 

The person above her is... small. Again, the first thing Rhea sees are green eyes, then the ash blonde hair, the round ears – human, so human – and the round face, and she knows enough about humans to recognize that this is little more than a child. A boy, the first hints of stubble on his chin. Unarmed. 

“What… what is going on…?” is all she can ask. The boy looks surprised to even hear her speak. 

“I… Stay still, alright?” He sighs, almost resigned, before letting go of her. 

Rhea ignores him, moving to prop her body up on her elbows, and immediately regrets it, groaning as her body aches from wounds she doesn’t remember earning. 

“I told you.” The voice comes again, a bit annoyed. “I did what I could, but I’m not a good healer.” 

Despite saying that, the human doesn’t move. He’s sitting beside her, a bloodied towel in his hands, and she realizes he’d been cleaning her wounds. There’s nothing about this little scene that doesn’t look absurd. Rhea almost wants to laugh, but her ribs ache as she breathes. 

“Who are you, then?” A torturer’s apprentice, she guesses, or whatever new horror the children of men might have invented. 

“I am… just a squire. I thought you needed help.” 

It doesn’t sound like the truth, but it doesn’t sound like a complete lie either. What kind of creature is she dealing with? 

“Do you know what I am?” She asks. It feels like a good starting point.

The boy exhales slowly, as if it’s hard to say the answer aloud. But he looks at her, and he speaks. 

“A child of the Goddess.” 

Rhea lets her eyes close again. It’s more painful than she expected, to be called by that name again now that there’s no more children, no Goddess.

“The... humans, up there in Zanado,” she spells out every word, a desperate attempt to keep her voice steady, “did you see? Are you one of them?”

“I...” the boy hesitates. “A relative of mine is fighting with them.”

Of course. Of course, he’s here to sell her off. Have those monsters ever done anything but steal from her people, trick and betray them? And how was she so stupid to let them capture her? She can’t remember, she can’t...

A loud, heart wrenching sob. She looks up to see the boy’s head is hung low, his shoulders shaking.

“It was... awful. Indescribable.” He growls. “I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t do anything, I...”

A heavy silence hangs through the space between them. He’s… crying? What for?

“Then I saw you fall from the sky.”

Rhea holds her breath. She remembers she’d been flying, high and away from Zanado, and then...

“It was night already, and they still weren’t done. I was waiting south of the canyon, and I saw you fly away... You’d almost made it beyond the mountains,” the boy goes on, gesturing with shaky hands, “then your body, ah...”

“I reverted.” She says, more to herself than to him. She didn’t think herself so weak, as to be unable to even maintain her form long enough to run away.

“Yes. The others must’ve thought you dead, but... everyone had so much in their hands that nobody bothered to check.”

“Nobody but you.” He nods at her words. “Why?”

The boy wipes his face, but he still doesn’t look up.

“I needed to leave. I couldn’t stand to watch.”

Rhea breathes slowly, to accommodate for her aching body. She doesn’t understand. The humans decided to pick up arms, to march together with that man. They must’ve known what that would entail. They must’ve been resolute to fulfill his will, to slaughter her people, to steal their power for themselves. But this... There is something incomprehensible about the children of men.

“Then why didn’t you go back home? What did you come here for?” 

He sniffles a bit more, and Rhea takes the chance to see what “here” even is. It seems to be a cave, dark limestone walls stretching long behind the boy’s back, stark rays of the setting sun peeking from a single opening. Halfway through the tunnel waits a horse, its saddlebags heavy with all kinds of herbs and roots. On the wall by its side, her eyes catch a familiar glimmer – her sister’s sword. It’s still here. 

Rhea considers the situation: her body still aches, but the wounds have been closed with care – she definitely wouldn’t bleed out just after some rough movements – not to mention the pain gets less intense by the minute. How easy would it be to lunge forward, grab the sword, and get rid of the human? His flesh would cut like butter on Begalta’s blade. Then, she’d be alone, and safe. She should be. 

“I wanted to… help. If I could.” The boy speaks, his voice cutting through her thoughts, dragging her back to the earth. “Your people were living in peace. What we did was inexcusable. I thought… if I could help just one of you, then…” 

His words cut off, as he chokes out another sob. Rhea finally finds the strength to push herself to sit up, balancing her upper body against the stone wall. She doesn’t understand. He’s... crying for her? For her people? She’d do the same if she could, but there’s so much stopping her. A weight on her shoulders, the image of the canyon painted red right behind her eyes, the shadow of that wicked creature gripping Mother’s bones. The promise she made to herself, to tear him to pieces until there’s nothing left but the memory of him.

And so her eyes stay open wide and dry, refusing to let her relieve her sorrow: she can’t cry, no matter how much she misses Mother.

But this child can. And he is. And somehow, seeing this pain, seeing this compassion, coming from a creature so different from her... Rhea wonders if she could let herself trust his words, believe that she truly found a blossom upon the scorched earth.

“You saved my life, didn’t you?” She asks, leaning closer, until his face is but a breath away.

The boy looks up, and surprisingly enough, doesn’t back away. Dark green eyes look back at her, heavy with tears, but unflinching. She almost wants to smile. Once upon a time she used to be the one who’d get stared at like this, as her older siblings tried to figure if she was telling lies. Everything is different now.

“I think I did.”

Rhea likes that answer. She likes that he’s not looking away when he adds: “I would do it again.”

“Will you tell anyone about our meeting?” She asks. “That man, or the ones who share your blood?”

“Not unless you wish for me to do it.”

“I do not.”

“Then I won’t.”

She likes that answer as well, once again given while looking in her eyes. He’s not afraid of her, she realizes. She’s talking to someone with a mind of his own, someone proud, someone who’s just a bit... soft. It feels too much like staring into a mirror. She pulls away from the boy, but lays a hand on his.

“I thank you.”

He gives a weak laugh, wiping his tears again. The silence that follows seems to stretch for an eternity, as she stares out to the opening of the cave, towards the bare trees and the rays of the sun turning darker and darker. What was she doing at this time, yesterday? Had the humans already arrived? Was she flying away or was she taking care of the flowers in Noa’s garden? She can’t remember. There’s no one she could even ask. There’s no past anymore, no memory. The path behind her has been burned, torn, taken apart. She can only move forward, somehow, and this is how she has to start: bloodied, beaten, weak. But not completely alone. She lifts her hand from the boy’s.

“You should leave soon.” She tells him, her eyes still lost a world away. “Wherever you decide to go, we both have a long road ahead.”

The boy nods, and stands up, heading for the horse. Rhea does the same, leaning against the wall for support. She needs to be strong, she needs to keep up. And… she doesn’t need to know – especially if she’s being wrong about this person, and he’s going to betray her – but she can’t help but be curious.

“Might I have your name?”

He breathes, halting right in front of the horse. “I’m just Wil.” She feels that once again, it’s not a complete truth, but she can’t afford to point that out. “Might I have yours?”

“Seiros.” She replies, without missing a beat.

She doesn’t know why. That name is something so close to her heart, to the point she can still hear Mother’s voice calling it. It’s not something she’s meant to share, but she does it anyway, a piece of her truth for a piece of his.

“Seiros.” He repeats, and she feels a thrill from the reverential way in which he speaks it. Like it’s a name to be recognized, to be respected. She almost feels safe. Then he speaks again, turning to look at her. “What are you going to do now, lady Seiros?”

Rhea doesn’t know. She doesn’t have the faintest idea. But her mouth moves, full of purpose, faster than her mind can keep up. “I will kill that man.”

The boy doesn’t look surprised by the vague answer, simply nodding at her words.

“I thought you might want to. I’d like to be there when the day comes.”

She doesn’t stop herself from laughing at the bold statement, this time, despite the pain it brings to her bruised body. The boy says something else, more fussing over her wounds, about how she shouldn’t be so careless, and the scene is familiar enough that she almost sees another face on his body – the bright green eyes, the stern voice of her brother Cichol. Cichol went away. Cichol is alive. The blood of her blood is...

“I have to travel south.” She says aloud, interrupting Wil’s scolding.

“Oh.” Now he does look surprised, but not unpleasantly so. “I wonder if we’ll meet again soon.”

He hands her a satchel then, full of food and herbs and what she guesses is medicine. Something for her journey? How absurd... How kind. It’s the kind of thing Mother loved humans for.

“When we meet again, I will pay you back… Wil the squire.”

He laughs, before mounting the horse and turning it towards the exit.

“Godspeed, lady Seiros,” says the little liar, “I’ll try to keep myself alive until then.”

With that, he takes off, out of the cave and into the forest, and she watches his pale hair burn white and disappear against the rapidly descending sunset.

She sinks down to the ground, holding the satchel close to her chest, and reaching for the sword abandoned on the wall. She doesn’t allow herself to think about anything, until the sun is gone and the starlight starts to peek inside her hiding spot. Then she thinks about Cichol and his family in Enbarr, and she finally stands up, reaching the opening of the cave. Begalta’s sword in her hand sheds a gentle, pale light down on the dark ground, her sister, her lone companion in the long night.

Seiros starts walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i might've taken that "he saved me" in CF too literally, but unless DLC gives us new info... well, here we go.  
thank you for reading, and thanks to mel @lentranced for the beta!


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